“Why would you want to stay here?” asks a protagonist while surveying a trash-strewn, falling-apart Romanian setting in the debut film of Cristian Mungiu, who this year won Cannes’s Palme d’Or for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. Young, bright, and hopeful, youngsters like the couple Luci and Soriana or the beautiful Mihaela have seemingly no good reasons to stay in Romania, but no chances or means to leave either. Stuck with a dead-end “advertising” job (he walks around a mall in a giant beer costume), Luci has the most incentive to emigrate, but it’s Soriana who takes a step that may lead elsewhere. Weaving their stories in with several others, mixing wry social commentary with romantic comedy and slacker missteps, Mungiu fashions a bittersweet satire of migration, return, and staying put.

—Jason Sanders

• Written by Mungiu. Photographed by Vivi Dragan Vasile. With Alexandru Papadopol, Anca Androne, Samuel Tastet, Tania Popa. (99 mins, In Romanian with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From CNC)